Rise of the Secret Fire (Tentative- Waterdeep Fan Fic)
by raventree44
Summary: For fans of Dice, Camera, Action, D&D, and everything fantasy. Hello all! This is a work in progress on my character Kharon Raventree and others, which will include their adventures in Waterdeep and far beyond. Join Kharon and his adventuring party on the streets of Waterdeep as they work to save their childhood friend and compatriot from a terrible fate.
1. Chapter 1- Dreamscapes

_To ride the waves of space and time like Elminster himself. Maybe in that case I could escape this hole_. The one called Kharon Raventree stood and brushed off the never-ending dust from his now more grey than black breeches and took a quick glance at his surroundings. _Perfectly cut, hazy grey stone walls rising on both sides. Lanterns that never seemed to lose any light at all. There's nowhere else it could be._ _Waterdeep, near the docks._

_Is she even alive? Dark red and searing orange fire rose up from the floorboards, the walls, everywhere, driven by some terrible elemental magic force. The building's floor cracked and he fell to the street. The fire erupted and the building incinerated outward like the explosion from the most powerful Fireball spell he'd ever seen. _"Much worse than that." Kharon scanned the buildings nearby in vain hope that one of them would have a tavern. _Even one of those ritzy wine galleries._ Nothing caught his eye. Nothing but what were undoubtedly a group of aristocratic manors, walled-off from the world as always. _Unassuming on the outside, full of meaningless opulence on the inside_.

_Why can't I just go back and prevent it? No, it's over now. It's my fault and she's gone. At least I know that if anyone can reach paradise at all, she'll be there. _Kharon shook his head as if to shake out all of the thoughts but knew deep-down that only one thing could do that. _Revenge, revenge or something to forget_.

He rubbed his almost invisible horns absently. _The reminder of where I come from_. Then, as he felt his brain spiraling back to a convoluted mass of images that he didn't want to see, he started walking, not knowing where he was going, not caring where he would end up. He pulled his dark blue, almost black high-collared jacket around himself absently, feeling the cold a little bit more than usual. "A little less wine in me is what it is." He chuckled, though the sound came out almost like a growl and he felt no happiness at all in connection with it.

Then, a voice, out of somewhere, somewhere nearby. "Kharon, you need to get to the docks." _It can't be. Everyone's dead. The only people I care about gone, gone forever. It's been days. _

"Kharon." Hands shook him and he found himself somewhere else, _back in that house_. Somewhere deep in his consciousness, a presence laughed in a way that was indescribably soul shattering.


	2. Chapter 2- In the Midst of Oblivion

Kharon coughed up ashes and smelled the unmistakable acrid stench of smoke as tried to shakily rise to his feet. The walls veritably melted away before him and he saw the front door, momentarily free of flame, at the same time that he heard the scream from somewhere outside.

He crashed into the door, causing it to explode into splinters with his expertly-placed weight. _Three shadowy figures, one of them holding her and dragging her out into the street_. There was no time for any other thought before one of them had set upon him with a curved sword that flared up with flame at a whispered word. "You looked too close Raventree." The voice spoke to him as if it were some sort of long-time acquaintance of his, though he didn't recognize it.

In one fluid motion, Kharon drew his short sword and the three runes on its' blade lit up golden in the strangely dark street. Fransesca screamed and he realized out of the corner out of his eye that she had fought her way of the two other figures. _She stabbed one of them_. He smiled in spite of the situation, remembering just how much of a master of the blade she had truly become in her time working with The Harpers. Then the figure swung its' blade so hard that he was swept out of his reverie and into the fight completely. With his attention rapt on his attacker, Kharon entered the dance of survival, determined to get to Fransesca before the others gathered themselves and pulled her away again.

Then a scream, a scream cutting through the air like the dying wail of some sort of animal that injures you all the way through to your consciousness and Kharon watched in horror as five more of the creatures seemed to appear in the middle of the street. At the same time, a deafening sound rang out behind him as if multiple small avalanches were occurring at once.

The creature in front of him stepped backward slightly, lowered its' hood, and grinned. Kharon screamed in spite of himself as he tried to drive his sword through its' cloak and its' chest. Met with resistance, he backed up and the identity of what he was truly facing dawned on him.

_That can't be. _Then a shivering fear overtook him and he saw Fransesca run towards him as a shape seemed to rise out of nowhere from the stones of the street. _None of this is real_. _It can't be_. _We didn't go that far. _

The creature turned back suddenly, looking toward the house and he saw a momentary opening as Fransesca had almost reached him from the other side of the street and he jogged towards her, parrying one passing blow from his former assailant. Her slightly tanned visage betrayed no emotion, though her eyes seared with an inner fire of which he knew the meaning all too-well. "Kharon, they want me. It's because of what happened with Grim in the north." She tried to push him back toward the direction from whence he had come but he resisted, standing firm.

"And that's exactly why I'm not leaving you here to get killed." He held his hand up as if to touch her face, then quickly moved it to clap her on the shoulder. "You are impossible." She flicked her hair with one hand as the creatures advanced on them. "How long till the watch realizes this is happening?"

"If they're here, maybe never." Kharon shrugged, bending his knees slightly, readying himself for another dance with what he know knew was something from the depths of his nightmares. _Of anyone's nightmares_.

"Kharon." A cry rose from somewhere in the blaze behind him. The creatures advanced altogether from two separate sides and the two friends readied themselves for what might be the end. As their swords met with the swords of the first two figures, the others shed their cloaks and there was no doubt. _Servants of hell itself_.


	3. Chapter 3- Tripping through the Ether

He stood on the precipice of a towering mountain that touched the sky and yet reached down to a wasteland that was unfamiliar. Seeing further than where his own two feet was close to impossible due to the volcanic ash raining down from no visible source around him. Then a boom, louder than anything he had ever heard before, louder even than the cannons of that massive ship they'd encountered around the cape near Port Nyanzaru.

As he stepped forward however, the mist seemed to part and he felt a creeping dread that almost froze him to the spot. Roiling balls of fire streaked down to the broken ground that was leagues below him, over and over again.

Through it all, he could see a shining shape circling the sky in the distance. Putting a hand over his eyes, he could just make out the fact that the shape had five heads and he felt his extremities slowly become numb, followed by his face. "Can't be," as he spoke for the first time, he realized that his voice sounded far away and cracked beyond belief. _Tiamat herself. Then this is Avernus_. "Why am I here?" He spoke to the air, then felt his face redden in embarrassment, followed by another internal shiver at the thought of who or what might answer him.

The fire continued to rain down, and everything came fully into focus in a deafening cacophony of sound. "Grimalin Siannodel." The voice bounced around his head as if it were searching for the center of his brain. "You are required at the Bronze Citadel." The air started to shake and the area around him tore apart into color, then darkness.

He awoke in the midst of a burning building, coughing as he tried to find some sort of connection to actual, breathable air. As his eyes came into focus, he realized that he was lying in the wreckage of the Whistenmere house, with his leg pinned under a pile of stone and wood. Looking upward, he noticed Kharon and Fransesca back to back in the street, surrounded by... _No. No. No_.

"Kharon!" He struggled to remember the words to the teleport spell. A piercing wail shot across the night and he resisted the urge to slip back into the blackness. _How did they get into Waterdeep? _Then two unnatural, gargantuan birds swooped down out of the sky and everything fell into utter chaos_. Not birds, something worse. _


	4. Chapter 4- Impossible Odds

Just as Grimalin felt the right words on the tip of his tongue, the two bird creatures landed on the ground, on each side of Francesca and Kharon as if to envelop them. He shouted the words, even though it wasn't exactly necessary and felt himself shimmering back into a physical existence next to Francesca and Kharon, who was whirling back and forth with one of the armored figures, who had all shed their cloaks onto the ground. "Grim?" Francesca was so startled by his appearance that she slipped, nearly fell to the stones, juggling her sword precariously in her arm at the same time and parrying a blow from one of the armored figures with one leg touching the ground. "Take my hand." When she didn't answer, he yelled, "Take my hand for the love of all that isn't hell!" He felt her fingers slip into his hand while he reached out for Kharon, who by now, had circled back toward them.

"Raven, take my hand." Kharon said nothing, but clasped Grimalin's shoulder instead.

At first, nothing happened.

The bird creatures, which were hulking vultures with human features except for their feathers, wings, and bid heads, were now close enough to step on them in one motion. The same shrill scream sounded out and a third landed almost on top of them just as Grimalin yelled out the last word of the spell and they felt themselves coalesce into being somewhere else, somewhere further away.

Grimalin rolled out of thin air on top of a slanted, tiled roof and caught himself just before he fell to the solid stone street below. What in the abyss? Teleport spells don't work like that. "Francesca, no,no, oh gods."

Everything seemed to be happening in an exaggeratedly slow fashion. Kharon dived off the roof, but not to his death, his lanky legs swinging in the air as he held onto Francesca, who was being borne into the air by a...Vrock. Grimalin's wracked his brain for something to do. Anything. Any spell.

Any at all.

Vrocks can resist just about anything. Grimalin watched helplessly for a moment while the Vrock attempted to fly higher, but before it could reach too far above the rooftops, three arrows cut through the night in succession, three shining arrows, striking the Vrock in one of its' wings.

As it careened closer and closer to the ground, Grimalin stopped thinking period and cast fly on himself, shooting out into the air like a cannonball. Just as the Vrock started to hit a sort of death spiral toward the ground, Grimalin reached a close enough distance to cast fly on both of his friends at once, though neither of them seemed to have broken free of the demon bird at all.

The clarion call of a horn sounded in the distance and an unmistakable magic missile hit the demon. Two signs of the Waterdeep City Watch finally making it here. By then, the Vrock was on the ground, though Kharon seemed to have inexplicably extricated himself and Francesca from its' grasp as they ran down a nearby alleyway.

"What am I still doing up here? And, where is up here?" Grimalin had paused in the air, just about at roof level with most of the buildings, one of which was now almost decimated from the Vrock crashing into it before it slid to the street.

In that particular building, three figures were already scrambling down a winding flight of stairs to the street. "Blast it." Grimalin glimpsed a pack of watch soldiers coming up the street ahead of him and quickly turned in the same direction that his friends had gone, sweeping his form down and then up just enough to avoid the rooftops as he flew, scanning the ground for them.

Just before he reached the bleeding edge of the city docks, with the shining lights of all of the moored ships twinkling at odd points in the abyss that was the bay, he saw them running under the lantern lights of the dock road and endeavored to land. "Grim," Francesca and Kharon, uncharacteritically, enveloped him in a hug at the same time. "How are you even here?" Francesca spoke first, though Kharon looked ready to ask the same, his icy eyes twinkling in the lantern light.

"We thought that you fell, back in Dragonspear." Kharon was still silent, his eyes searching Grimalin as if he were about to discover the answer to some sort of impossible puzzle, with a glance. I did. "Let's just say I experienced Avernus a little too long and have only just returned."

His eyes glinted and the shade of a grin crossed his visage before Kharon's voice cut the night. "I fail to see the amusement in this. We just almost lost you at the basalt tower and now you're just here?"

"We were all there, what do you want me to say?" Grimalin felt his anger rising like a boiling kettle over a fire and held back the magical energy that seemed to often come with it. "I'm back now, how about a welcome or a good to see you?"

Kharon looked as if he would react in a similar fashion, then his face seemed to soften like stone turning to clay. "It is good to see you Grim, but we clearly are not safe here." He motioned to the sky. As if I need a reminder of the Vrocks at this point. "I wouldn't dream of traveling anywhere again without you two," Grimalin reached over and ruffled Kharon's spiky white hair as if he were a child, until the Tiefling pushed him off, feigning anger, then grinning in an instant.

"Boys, it's past time for us to be gone." Francesca pointed towards the bay.

"So when do we start swimming, then?" Kharon's response got him a punch in the arm from Francesca, to which he winced, but laughed after a moment. Four piers down, they found themselves at a tiny stone building proclaiming itself to be the, "Mariner's Last Rest."

Opening the door to the tavern, they quickly drew the glances of all of the patrons, which to Grimalin, looked to be about fifteen in number, despite the obviously late hour of the night. At the same time that the fire and torchlight hit his eyes, he felt the exhaustion of his spell casting and the ordeal of the night catch up to him and swayed on his feet.

Kharon caught him as Fransesca was already talking to a dark-skinned half-elf female who Grimmalin recognized as Felara Huan, one of the only ship captain's to ever sail the entire west coast of Faerun more than once, top to bottom. Hopefully one of us has money. "As long as she doesn't mention the demons, we're good." Kharon nodded glanced at Grimalin, then pointed his head towards Francesca. "Here's to hoping," Grimalin muttered under his breath, though he chortled softly as well.

Soon, she returned with news that they had secured passage, though with the last of the funds that she had on her from her family inheritance. "The rest either burned up in that fire or is stuck in a bank that isn't safe to go to." So, we're broke for now. Grimalin's brow furrowed.

"Since Grim was just in hell, he's out and I was who knows where," Kharon turned out his pockets, then sank his head in mock shame when nothing came out. "Yeah, we'll talk about that later and you'll have to tell me everything." In response to that, Kharon looked uncharacteristically ill, though Grimalin knew him well enough to know that he was truly anxious.

Fransesca gave him a glance out of her peripheral vision as she continued to look at Grimalin. "So, we leave in mere minutes. It's the next pier over."


End file.
